My BFG 7900GT review(for you people who are worrying)

M

Mabrito

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 24, 2004
Messages
7,004
As promised, I would review my BFG 7900 GT as people are saying they are unstable, broken caps etc.

Sry for no pics, but my parents have my dig camera since they are out of town on a "mini vacation"

First the packaging:
This is where I firmly believe where all these problems are coming from. Im not a fan of BFG's packaging techniques. The card is laying between to sheets of molded plastic and then put inside the box, with a plastic window. I honestly believe this is where all the problems arise, because it can easily vibrate around and if something is resting on top of the box and poking at the box and worse the window, you can stab it and maybe damage something, and like some people been having, broken caps. The box is pretty flimsy itself. When I got it, the corners were bent, and the edges one side was even bent in.

Content:
I also believe BFG was being pretty stingy at this part. All you get is some manuel on hot to install it, a driver cd and a cd with a couple demos and what it looks like, Webroot spysweeper. You also get some advertisment like for the BFG community. O yeah, you get the HDTV cable and two DVI to VGA convertors. Coming from a MSI 6800 content to this, MSI puts it to shame. I got Farcry for free, like 10 free demos and even some DVD players etc. My friend who got a MSI 6800GT got like 5 full games and all the other stuff I mention. BFG could of definetely did better in this part.

The card itself:
From what I can see, it perfectly fine to the naked eye(I wear no glasses either). Caps are all in place, everything is there. I power it up, no problems what so ever. Played like 20 minutes of Oblivion on stock speeds and everything is running like a dream. Im running it on all High, view distance maxed, the actor fade halfway, shadows on medium, 2xAA, all water detail max and blood max and average like 30 outdoors and 50+ indoors. Not bad at all. Did like 5 mins of CS:S and running everything maxed. The fan is pretty silent but my MSI 6800 was quieter so I got some getting used to. It louder than the one 120mm fan I have in my case belive it or not. For the most part, im pretty happy. I did no overclocking yet and wont for about a week or two, just to make sure everything is working etc. Im running it on my 430 watt Thermatake power supply that has a +12V@18A rail and havnt noticed a restart or problem in not enough power yet. As Oblivion is very GPU hungry I think if my power supply wasnt up to the task, it would of shown problems when I was running the game.

Like I said, I believe the problems with this card is in the packaging as i was very disappointed in it. Just thought I post my comments as BFG hasnt been getting good reviews lately. Hope I help some of you people who were worrying about it. Sorry about not having pics. I can post some on Monday if you wish. If you have a favor, just let me know and Ill see what I can do.

EDIT:
It also idiling at 45 degrees and my case only has one 120mm fan. As for load, I will post those results when I have them.
 
thanks for the review bud...

never thought of the packaging theory.
 
Ok, I admit I don't have a clue. What are the caps?? I have a BFG 7800 GS OC AGP, I only paid $250- for it and did have to send the first one in on an RMA, got it back in 9 days I live in Nevada and it went to Illinois, but haven't had a problem since. When the action gets heavy the fan does kick up speed and is louder than any other fan (7 total) in my machine.
I totally agree with the packaging it's simple cheap crap, not even an anti-static bag and the included software is just garbage, the drivers weren't even close to current.
 
BriSleep said:
What are the caps??
Click to expand...
Capacitors. Or sometimes when people refer to the tiny surface mount components, they mean either capacitors or resistors (or maybe even diodes and transistors).

I haven't been following the problem threads. Are people receiving damaged cards?
 
Ah, thanks for the answer. Yes, my first card was damaged, there is a blue capacitor next to the molex plug on the the card and it was bent over and one leg was broken off. Obviously the reason I had to RMA it.
 
pxc said:
Capacitors. Or sometimes when people refer to the tiny surface mount components, they mean either capacitors or resistors (or maybe even diodes and transistors).

I haven't been following the problem threads. Are people receiving damaged cards?
Click to expand...

Yeah only on the BFG ones tough. Tomorrow when I get my camera back, I will take pictures for you guys at many angles and you what the card should look like as I think my card is undamage(thank god, I hate RMA's).
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Yeah only on the BFG ones tough. Tomorrow when I get my camera back, I will take pictures for you guys at many angles and you what the card should look like as I think my card is undamage(thank god, I hate RMA's).
Click to expand...

trust me you will love BFG rma's, they overnight you a new card (everyone I know who rma'ed a bfg card got something better including me, I rma'ed a 6800 and got a 6800GT) and you send back your old card in the box, usually a 1 day process

I got my 7900GT on the 14th of march with 0 problems, here are all my pics

79000043ox.jpg


7900013sr.jpg
 
That is interesting.

As you can see in KompressorV12 pics, mainly the packaging, its really not that hard to hit the card inside the box. Everything is exposed in the plastic window. Caps, heatsink, most of the card. If something was to poke at that window, some damage can take place. This is where I believe the problems arise at. This packaging compared to my MSI packaging, where the card was wrapped neatly in foam, its not that great.
 
Ya the early reports of broke capacitors scared me away from BFG even though I had a 6800GT from them.

A lot of companies now are using that plastic crap to ship there cards in. My 7800GT from EVGA was packaged like that. Also my recently received XFX 7900GTs are inside a two piece plastic thing. The XFX plastic though actually holds the cards a lot snugger than what came with my EVGA or BFG cards. Plus you get an almost rubix cube cardboard box to try to get open with the XFX :p

I wish companies would go back to nice box with card in antistatic bag between to nice pieces of foam.
 
Well, I just received mine and the cap on the bottom right of the card (fan side up) was bent off the card. It was still intact though. Upon further inspection, I noticed the cap was actually cracked. I called them up and after waiting about an hour on hold, they told me I could send it back to them at my expense and they would either fix it or give me a new one in 5-7 days.

That is really poor service if you ask me. Is that what you guys had to deal with?

I want to do SLI and was wondering if I could use a different brand card with this BFG? Something a bit more reliable. Any suggestions?

Thanks
 
Yep as long as its a 7900 GT you can do BFG and EVGA in SLI if you want. Say if the EVGA card has faster clock speeds, it would downclock to the BFG speeds. Then you can just OC them. I would go EVGA. The are getting all the buzz now on the Nvidia side. BFG blew it, as it looks like. People been saying there quality has been going down and there support service is going down also. This is my first BFG card, so I really cant judge them, but to me everything is great.
 
SigmaOrionis said:
Also my recently received XFX 7900GTs are inside a two piece plastic thing. The XFX plastic though actually holds the cards a lot snugger than what came with my EVGA or BFG cards. Plus you get an almost rubix cube cardboard box to try to get open with the XFX :p
Click to expand...
:D

The XFX cards are packaged pretty well. 2 piece plastic in a cardboard tray inside a cardboard box. I hate those X flaps. It's funny that the packagers put those round tape things on the sides that don't even open.
 
well now I am a bit confused. i was going to rma the bfg card i have and then buy the evga card for sli but am wondering if just buying the overclocked 7900gtx would be better?

sli or two 7900gt's? thanks
 
geltab said:
well now I am a bit confused. i was going to rma the bfg card i have and then buy the evga card for sli but am wondering if just buying the overclocked 7900gtx would be better?

sli or two 7900gt's? thanks
Click to expand...

I would think two 7900GT's would be faster, but getting a 7900GTX now and then SLI them later would be better. Plus you would have 512mb of memory. So a single 7900GTX sounds better IMO.
 
As far as getting a better card back on a BFG RMA, I didn't, except that it was a working card. The reason I didn't is because the 7800 GS OC is the top of the AGP line. The did ship it overnight once they got it though, total time without the card, 6 days.
 
I just purchased a new 7900gt from a retail store. The box in question has been changed. The outer box is still the same but the card is paked in a white box. You can see this thru the outer boxes window. BFG also included a letter to the customer indicating that it was a recent change to their packing, and to ensure that this was a proper retail product. I guess they got sick of fixing the cards with broken caps!! Their were no problems with the card I bought. The packing seems to be enough to solve the issue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top